


Grifting Nicodranus

by moonmoonandthemorrigan



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Untitled Goose Game Fusion, Gen, Might have accidentally pulled Yussa very far out of character for antagonist reasons, POV Caleb Widogast, Protective Caleb Widogast, Second Person Narration, Welcome to Nicodranus where everyone's a conman, and I mean everyone, goose thoughts and the over use of them, horrid Zemnian that isn't translated but I'm sure you'll get the idea.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:46:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26195845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonmoonandthemorrigan/pseuds/moonmoonandthemorrigan
Summary: Everyone forgets that Caleb and Nott canonically run cons.
Relationships: Fjord & Jester Lavorre, Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Grifting Nicodranus

Con no 321: Untitled Goose Game  
It is a lovely day in Nicodranus and you are a horrible goose.  
Feathers dance in the sea-breeze as something small and green pokes out of the shadows, ears twitching beneath a soil-covered hood. The figure lifts their hands up to their face and there is a sparkle of the arcane as a voice, scratchy and high pitched, echoes in your ears.  
“Caleb. I'm in position. You can respond to this message.”  
No, you can't. You are a goose and thinking particularly goose-y thoughts.  
Like how there's a bread stand 200 feet away that you definitely could end up stealing all of the bread at. Mmmmmnn. Bread. And they were an arschloch earlier today when they wouldn't accept your coin, which, fair, but that doesn't mean that they can let the green one starve. And the bread would be so lovely.  
A tall figure in white robes strides down the road to the open quay. The stride is more of a glide and they only know about this thing (human brain is calling him a mark) because the green one has other green friends. The human niggling part of you wants to run, hide, robes are not good things for people to be wearing if they want to be good people. The human part remembers and does very little but. But you are a goose. So the rage that you hide so deeply within your gut comes with the wheezing sound of your honking as you bare the toothy insides of your neck and scream—wings wide as you rush toward the mark and begin to bite at the white-robed ones legs. This was the plan.  
You remember even though you're a goose. This was the plan. You run up and distract (bite, harry, and you had no idea that you could flutter that high and be able to reach his long pointed ears with your webbed and taloned feet but you do) as the green one uses the opportunity to pick his pocket.  
She darts out as the robe flutters open and you see a small book—you know this kind of book—hanging off of his hip. Panic floods through you as you give a screech to warn her.. Not safe.. not safe.... nestling is not safe. She doesn't heed it because you can see her own feet dancing next to the bottom of his robes.  
Panic in the goosiest of your thoughts transforms into a space of pure spite and vitriol. You bite his hand hard as he tries to bring it down toward you in some arcane sort of spell—you can taste the remnants of the spell on your tongue as you drag the spines of it against his skin (if it had a taste beside arcane it would be ash and pepper, which made human brain want to recoil immediately)--and as soon as the spell stops you release dropping down a foot and a half to where your head is now two inches away from the book. Your beak seizes it and, wonders upon wonders, it seems neither trapped nor particularly well placed upon his belt because it gives with a sharp tug. You now have a spell-book in your mouth and the white-robed figure is looking down at you with suspicion.  
You give a honk around the book and barrel toward the mage who is still surprised that this pathetic bird—you know perfectly well that your feathers are askew and you were just hanging out in the reeds where it is not perhaps the cleanest of sea waters—has decided to rush him instead of run away from him. Human brain remembers that kind of thing and the smells of something astringent and fake clean. But you are a goose.  
You run. Honking around the book as you run toward both the bakers (it was a shame that you couldn't have bitten his legs but the way the bread flew off of his stand was pretty satisfying anyway, and there's a roll balanced none to safely on the book now so maybe, if you're careful, you can eat it later) and the winding back alleys that have been your and nestling's home for the past three months. The tall man chases and you can hear his footsteps clattering behind him. You take two sharp turns, one left one right and barrel down another close. Where you come upon a dead end.  
He's still far behind you but gaining.  
You drop polymorph. And everything washes into you, the panic floods into your chest because this was a verdammt schlectes idee and you knew it. It was a risk.  
Your shaking hands open the spell-book to a random page and your eyes scan from one side to another as you realize that this is the spell for invisibility. You tear out the page and shove it into your jacket as you drop the spell book onto the dusty alley floor. His footsteps are coming closer as you cast polymorph again.  
You are a goose again. And you stand over your prize cawing as if your horribleness inside can be properly conveyed by the amount of wing flapping and crowing that you do.  
“CALEB!” the green one has followed the robed usurper whose legs are now trying to shoo you away from your rightful prize. The green one is standing in front of you now. “Please don't hurt him. He's my only friend.”  
The robed one tries to take another kick from around the green one. It's good that he doesn't seem to want to hurt her, but you hiss anyway. It's your prize, you earned it.  
The green ones arm bars you from biting again and you know that you'll be grateful later but for now you still feel the rage of the goose. The robed one glares down at you both and another hiss echoes from your mouth before you are consciously aware of it. Your wings flare out as you prepare to drop the form again when the door from the side of the alleyway opens up.  
A large man issues out of it and you can feel his boots next to your wings and you twist your neck around to hiss at him too. He's not the most important of the threats, despite being much bigger than the two of you, but he's still far too close. He steps slightly to the side.  
“What's goin on here?” his voice is a timbre that sounds slightly foreign to his human brain, the sounds long and drawn out as they drop the letters that would stop them in their tracks. He looks down at the green one and you're slightly surprised that he is also green and has a small set of scars next to his right eye.  
“This goose has harassed me from the open quay to here. It stole my spell-book and...” He takes a step forward to tower an even harder shadow over the small green one. And you hiss and honk as she backs slightly between your webbed feet.  
The tall green one looks down at both you and the green one, your nestling, as another clattering of noise comes out from the door and a bright blue tiefling comes out of it in a realm of color and what looks like stardust (later you will determine that no, it was not stardust--or gemdust for that matter--but glitter which unfortunately settled into your hair).  
“Oskar?” her voice too sounds foreign but teasing. It drags the two syllables into four and inexplicably is close enough to make human brain long for home. “Oh hello, how can we help you?”  
“This gentleman had his spell-book stolen, looks like.” The tall green one grasps your prize and brushes the worst of the dust off of the book as he hands it to the robed one. “Here ya are, no harm done. I assume y'all have other things to be doin' on this fine mornin'.”  
“What about the goose?”  
“Goose?” The blue tiefling peers around the doorway. She seems to be leaning excitedly forward and backward trying to get a good look at you.  
“Yeah, Jes, Goose.”  
“Ohmigosh, he's so cute!” There is a rush of skirts as she flounces even closer to where you are and you startle enough to hop slightly to the side as said skirts are now suddenly into your peripheral. You honk anxiously to the little green one and hope that she stops the blue hand that is now slowly coming to touch your pinions.  
“He doesn't really like to be touched,” Nestling says and you are grateful because the tiefling is suddenly focusing on the green one whose mask is tightly placed over her lower face.  
“Ohmigosh is he yours?”  
“Something like that.” Nestling looks a little awed at the amount of attention that the tiefling is giving her and the way that her tail is undulating behind her like a cat.  
The robed one takes another step forward as if he had not been getting enough attention and your head snaps toward him on your long ungainly neck. You hiss.  
“That goose has stolen my property.”  
“All due respect, sir, but that goose is a goose. I really don't think that he has a concept of right and wrong. And it seems mighty rude to kill a girl's pet for what it's just gonna do anyway,” the tall green one leaned in slightly and there was a burst of the arcane from his hand as a sword materialized from it. “So I suggest that y'all go about your day now.”  
The robed one huffed and turned on his heel as he marched out of the alley.  
“Goodbye! It was nice to meet you!”The tiefling waved at his back as he did so. He continued going. “Wow, what a dick you guys. If I were a goose, I would have bitten him in the dick.”  
“Now, Jes, how would you become a goose?”  
“I bet the Traveler would help me. He totally wouldn't have liked that guy.”  
“I bet he wouldn't have,” you can hear the barely suppressed eye-roll in his voice. “What are y'all doin' here?”  
“What's it to you?!” the green one shouted as she pulled out her crossbow and pointed it at the tall one. You honk slightly, and she lowers it a bit. Small mercies.  
“You're mighty unfriendly to someone who's just saved your bacon.”  
“Come on, Fjord, you don't have to be mean to them. I bet there's a good reason that they've ended up here. Though, I think I remember seeing you on our last job? You know, with the really stinky looking bearded guy. I think I drew your picture.”  
“What? No! I'm new here!” The green one squeaks and you know that there's only a little bit farther that she can go because, unlike you, she's a rotten liar. You need to distract them.  
There's still the roll on the ground to consider. You find it and waddle up to the small green one and place it on her head. The small green one pauses underneath the baked good like she's afraid of letting it drop back to the ground, and you tap her shoulder twice with your chin.  
“Ohmigosh, you're so cute!” The tiefling looked like she had just forgotten everything about the job in the face of animal cuteness. Unfortunately, that also means that her arms are now firmly wrapped around your neck in a hug and you get the feeling that if you made any kind of defensive move against her that sword would now be at your neck. Her fingers are in your neck feathers and one of the charms on her horns is dangling over your beak in a way that is thoroughly uncomfortable.  
You are a goose. You snap at it. It gets stuck on one of your teeth and you rear your head back to try and get it unstuck. It does with a sickening click as it dislodges from the chain and the tiefling holds you tighter as the charm starts going down your throat and you start choking. The tiefling releases you with a concerned look as you honk at nestling to hurry up behind you as you sprint back down the alley and out of sight as you feel yourself choking harder and harder.  
Thankfully, she follows and the two of you are quite down a different alley where polymorph fails and you change back into yourself coughing rather loudly to try and get the charm out of your throat. Mercifully, it does and you spit out a small charm that looks like a doughnut. You take a few breaths against the alley wall. That was far too close. Far too close in every sense of the word and all you want to do is just collapse right here with the large amount of absolutely stupid shit that just happened in the short amount of time it took to get from the open quay to here.  
“Caleb, Caleb are you alright?”  
“Ja, Nott. I'm fine. They follow you?”  
“No, I told them that you'd hide from everyone unless it was me who found you. What happened, you were just supposed to let me pick his pockets.”  
“Saw the spell-book and I thought that you were going to be in danger.”  
“Good thinking, Caleb. Did you get anything out of it?”  
“Ja. And I have just enough paper and ink to transcribe it before the shipment comes next week Grissen. Did you?”  
“50 Platinum.”  
“50?!” You grab Nott by her arms and swing her around in a spinning hug. “This will be so good for us.”  
“Yep, I told you we could get a lot out of it. And he won't even notice until he tries to pay for something because I left my bag of buttons in his pocket.”  
“I'm sorry about your buttons.”  
“Yeah me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> This might have a few more chapters to it at some point (and the tags will be updated when they do), but for now here we are.


End file.
